07 May 2014 2:50 PM

Neither Stalin nor Mussolini

Roger Boyes of ‘The Times’ has now returned from Waitrose (whither he went when he was losing an argument with me about Ukraine) and has drawn to my attention an article he has written for that newspaper, under the restrained and judicious headline ‘The new Mussolini and his axis of the macho. Europe’s nationalists see Putin as an ally. But, as Ukraine shows, he has no respect for borders’.

Lackaday, I cannot link to it for it is behind Mr Rupert Murdoch’s paywall. I can’t even quote any more than small bits of it. But I can mention that it is adorned with a picture of Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist dictator, posing with fists on hips in a stance of greater-than-usual arrogance. The caption beneath this study runs : ‘Vladimir Putin is a post-fascist, heir to Benito Mussolini, not Joseph Stalin’.

How odd. Why would a caption to a picture of Mussolini *begin* with the words ‘Vladimir Putin’? I can’t think of another example of this practice.

But then again I suppose we must welcome the open-minded, nay, even-handed thinking which has led Mr Boyes or his editor to concede that Vladimir Putin is not Stalin. This is a major step forward, I suppose. For me, it’s simple. Mr Putin has not yet opened a vast archipelago of homicidal labour camps, nor crammed millions of his citizens into them, nor launched a great terror on his people under which anyone may be seized without pretext, and tortured into confessing non-existent crimes before being shot in the back of the head or despatched to a living death in Norilsk. Mr Putin has not deliberately caused a gigantic famine in which millions have died. Mr Putin has not murdered many of his close associates. He has not signed an unscrupulous alliance with Hitler, partitioned Poland, or established an iron secret police despotism over the whole of Central Europe. Nor has he persecuted legitimate scientists, nor has he embarked on anti-semitic purges of doctors. Nor has he encourage a pharaonic personality cult, requiring the erection of thousands of images of him. Nor has he encouraged a cult around a boy (Pavlik Morozov) who betrayed his own parents to the secret police, nor has he compelled his own immediate colleagues to endure in silence the cruel imprisonment of their close family members..

But many at ‘The Times’ and elsewhere in Murdochworld seem to have bought their political telescopes from some strange Iraq War surplus shop. Viewed through these instruments, almost everyone looks like either Stalin or Hitler (depending on the particular crisis involved) . And all kinds of other strange objects can also be seen. Readers of M.R. James’s ghost story ‘A View From A Hill’, will be familiar with the idea of a sinister telescope or field glass which shows the user what dead men’s eyes have seen. The Murdochscope, by contrast, shows you what other men’s minds have mistakenly imagined. Far, far off it can also descry weapons of mass destruction somewhere in the Iraqi desert.

As for ‘respect for borders’, I’m not sure that the neo-conservative globalist movement is very troubled by borders, or entitled to get hoity-toity about them. Apart from supporting their total abolition in continental Europe through Schengen, what about (here I go again) Kosovo and Cyprus, anyone? Or, come to that, Iraq, now shorn for all intents and purposes of Iraqi Kurdistan, a ‘western’ protectorate. If airspace counts as a border, Libya also deserves a mention.

Mr Putin, as often discussed here, is no paragon. He is indeed a man of many very bad faults, and his state is corrupt and violent. But to mention him in the same breath as Stalin is simply to betray a complete lack of the sense of proportion.

And Mr Boyes is intelligent enough not to do that, just as he really ought to know that Moscow has referred to itself as the third Rome for many centuries. But Mussolini? According to Mr Boyes, Mr Putin is a ‘post-fascist, an heir to Benito Mussolini’. But apart from using such phrases as ‘right wing’ and such expressions as ‘nationalist’, which thought-free left-wingers employ to win the plaudits of their friends without actually having to explain the assumed wickedness of these positions, there’s really very little to justify either headline or picture. Mussolini and Putin really do not have that much in common and nor (alas for Russia) does Russia have much in common with Italy.

Instead, he speaks darkly of meetings between Mr Putin and various nationalist parties of the anti-immigration sort, which left-wing 1968 types like to call ‘fascist’ long after George Orwell rightly dismissed the word as having no real meaning. Once again I reproduce his words from ‘Politics and the English Language’ : ‘The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. This is even more true than it was when Orwell first wrote it in 1946, and I am amazed at the number of members of my trade who are either unaware of it (which is shameful), or who ignore it (which is lazy).

I agree that this is itself interesting, though I have to say that I personally wouldn’t give the time of day to any of these nationalist formations, and I would add such meetings to my criticism of Mr Putin. But it’s interesting because it does tend to underline my point that what separates Mr Putin from any other major political figure is that he is a supporter of national sovereignty. It is the single characteristic of the man which separates him from all other major figures in world politics. Others are despots. Others run corrupt states. Others are secretive. None defends sovereignty. And modern euro-politics has turned sovereignty( see below) from a mainstream opinion to an eccentric heresy.

This, above and beyond all things, is what really riles the forces of Blairism and Murdochism, in whose newspaper Mr Boyes writes. They are revolutionary internationalists, open-borders enthusiasts, scornful of national sovereignty , of protection of national industries and of immigration control. They search for pretexts to invade and overthrow states of which they do not approve, for whatever reason.

That is why (and they never answer this point) they were quite happy to put up with the gross misbehaviour of Boris Yeltsin, from rigged elections to shelling his own parliament to savage war against the Chechens. This of course is because Mr Yeltsin let the ‘West’ plunder his country without restraint, and because he did not get in the way of its various Blairite adventures.

But they won’t forgive Vladimir Putin for sins which are in many cases rather smaller. I am told this is ‘whataboutery’ , whatever that is. Well, if it is, then ‘whataboutery’ is a very powerful argument, just as ‘Tu quoque’ (‘You did it too’) has always been. If you claim to act out of principle, and you can be shown not to be doing so, then your claim is destroyed. And a principle, by its nature, applies in all cases. I am sorry I need to explain this, but it seems necessary. If you attack Mr Putin , the questions ‘Why then do you not similarly attack Messrs Yeltsin, Erdogan, Sisi, Xi Jinping for the same faults?’ must be answered. In fact can I put in here a very loud plea for someone to say *something* about Egypt, the last place where all right-minded people naively backed the Utopian mob, so plunging a moderately unhappy country into the pit of misery and hysterical repression where it now wallows, uncriticised by us.

The answer may lie in words written by Zbigniew Brzezinski( Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, and the unsung architect of Moscow’s doomed intervention and eventual downfall in Afghanistan. He wrote in his 1997 book ‘The Grand Chessboard’ : ‘Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”

‘However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.’

I have no doubt that similar words could be found (if we could read them) in the textbooks studied by trainee Russian diplomats, at the great elite MGIMO university on Vernadsky Prospect in Moscow.

Machine-gunning the Russian President with words such as ‘Faustian’ ‘Far Right’, ‘macho’ and Mussolini is no substitute for a grown-up analysis. Nor does it begin to cope with the problem of Russia, a huge and important country, released from its Soviet prison and trying to find its place in a world utterly different from the one in which it last existed.

Remember, when the Russian empire fell, the German, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires still existed, not to mention the British and French global empires. But Russia, even without Ukraine, remains one of the biggest land empires in human history. It has a huge task of repair, recovery and rebuilding, moral as well as physical. It will look at the world in ways different from ours a bankrupt empire turned into a client of another empire, and largely ruled by yet another empire. And who is to say it is wrong to do so?

In a little-noticed but fascinating story in which Vladimir Putin resisted both threats and inducements, from the country which has the *real* special relationship with the USA, to drop support for Syria. One explanation for this behaviour might be, er principle, even if in the end it is a self-serving one (for without sovereignty, Russia can expect to become a globally-run oilfield and source of cheap labour, much of its territory surrendered de facto to the EU and to China.). But the Putin of the caricature couldn’t possibly possess such a quality, could he?

What I find most interesting is that a desire for national sovereignty, which I was brought up to believe was normal, creditable and sensible, even desirable, has now been relegated to being a disreputable fringe position, held only by dodgy Poujadist parties. By the same principle, patriotism has become a form of bigotry, and mild social democracy, a mixed economy, reasonably strong trades unions, protection of strategic industries from foreign purchase or competition, have apparently become comparable with Venezuelan Communism.

It makes no sense to me. I must have been away when they held the briefing, which is why I still don’t think that Mr Putin is a modern Mussolini. He is just what he is, and needs to be understood as such.

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If it quacks, likes water, has web feet and feathers and fly it may indeed by a duck. Putin is indeed the 12st centuries version of Mussolini, not Hitler or Stalin, and your apologetics will not obscure the facts, For awhile Mussolini was relatively good for Italy, despite his antidemocratic measures, until his overseas adventures mired him and Italy in struggles over which he had little control. Putins adventurism poses the same risks, and because of his ego, he will make the same prat fall as Mussolini as his ego will allow him to become ensnared by forces beyond his control.

I did not say the West did not have a strong hand in the pro-Maidan movement, I said that they rode the wave afterwards.

Up until November 21, leading American analysts (and my former professors), Alexander J. Motyl and Serhij Plokhij, all believed Yanukovich would sign the DCFTA.
The Europeans did so as well. I don't think anyone at Langely believed Yanukovich would go so soon and I remember reading reports suggesting 'the Americans hope to see a power change within the Party of Regions'.

My opinion is that the Americans did not get 'involved' until sometime in early December, after the first crackdown and then a broadening of the protest.

Mr Jaremko should realise that the problem is quite simple. The claim that 'Orwell is banned in Russia', is, if true, of immense importance and indicates a very serious level of repressive stupidity in that country. It must therefore be taken seriously. It must therefore be *made* seriously that is to say, the person who introduces it must be able to provide evidence for it. The same would be true of my brother, had he said this. All Mr Jaremko has to do is produce his evidence, or say he was wrong. Mr Jaremko makes many assertions here. Some are hard to test. This one is easy. If a government bans books, it cannot escape doing so publicly and there will be evidence. Several international organisations, such as PEN and Amnesty will certainly have protested and drawn attention to it. Let us please test it. Mr Jaremko, having made the statement, is the one who must do the work.

If I am falsely attributing something to your brother, I'll take it back but as far as I see right now, I don't think I am.

Currently, I don't have the exact quote at my disposal. I have read and listened to much of both of you, bought both of your books, but I do not have an archive of everything you as journalists and authors have ever said. However, if for example, I said that 'Peter thinks SSRIs are dangerous', I would not be way off. As far as I can recall, you have never said those exact words, or perhaps you have, but in general I think it is fair to say 'Peter Hitchens has asserted that anti-depressants have many negative consequences' -- anyone roughly familiar with your work knows were you stand on this issue (and one that I fully agree with you on).

Christopher wrote and spoke a great deal about Orwell, as well as his opposition to totalitarianism. My recollection is that he made the attribution to certain authorities around the world continuing to stymie and suppress Orwell publications, teachings, and discussions in one of two possible places: 1) his frequent discussions on Animal Farm, or 2) his early warnings of the growing totalitarian tendencies of Vladimir Putin (and how we in the West were perhaps not paying enough attention).

What I think is relevant though, is whether or not Russian authorities suppress Orwell's work and whether or not Christopher was aware of it. The answer is that they did, relaxed a bit during Perestroika, Yeltsin, and early Putin, and then started suppressing again. That being said, I think its fair to say your brother was aware of it.

Mark Jaremko: The mass of evidence that the Ukraine protests were western backed is so obvious and so incontrovertible that it's tedious to have to cite these facts once again. There's the presence of McCain and Nuland in the Maidan, there's the leaked phone call where Nuland discussed who would be put in the new Ukraine regime, as if she were discussing who she'd invite to a private dinner party. There's the visit of the CIA head to Kiev. Then there's that other great neocon mouthpiece Lindsay Graham calling for the Russian economy to be "driven into the ground". Perhaps most importantly of all there's the overwhelming support the western neo- con media gave the thuggish rioters from day one, and the failure of the western political establishment to utter one word of condemnation of their many violent actions. Given what they got away with in Egypt and Libya, the neocons clearly believed they could dispense with subtle machinations behind the scenes this time, and instead wade straight in.

(and it is either Mark or Marc, one being the English and the other French, on my bilingual Canadian/Canadienne documents). Jaremko it is for both though.

I assumed you were a Russian nationalist because you used the term 'western sponsored gangsters' for the current authorities in Kyiv. If anybody is a gangster, it was Yanukovich and his cabal. Mind you, I agree, Tymoshenko is also another gangster. Yatseniuk, good luck with that one.

This notion that the current regime in Kiev was a Western backed overthrow, I just don't buy. The protests in November started off as a genuine grass roots movement. When temperatures plummeted in December, I received several calls from friends in Kyiv for 'help' so I sent a meagre amount of money via Western Union. They asked me 'we all here want to know when you guys are going to help us?' Somehow they assumed that because I am in the Canadian military, I have some sort of magic hotline to Langely. But the point is -- at the early points Western intervention was non-existent, they only rode the wave after it appeared.

My current understanding is that many in the Obama administration are upset that this 'Ukraine thing' was now handed to them and they now have to play it. Several have even criticized Europeans such as Carl Bildt for inflating Ukraine's European aspirations too much, too soon (during the DCFTA negotiations). So if it was a plotted coup indeed, why would Obama's people be complaining of getting 'their puppets installed'?

You ask what my source is for 'Orwell being banned in Russia'. My answer is very simple -- your brother.

Now granted, maybe things have changed during the enlightned rule of Putin since your brother published the statement. One can of course do a Google 'чи Оруэлл заборонений в РФ?'.

Even if a Russian citizen these days can access many online editions, the situation now is getting more and more repressive to the point of 'you can say whatever you want as long as nobody listens'. Therefore even if there is no specific decree banning the reading of the Hitchens brothers for example, one could still go to jail, be fined, or lose one's job if someone in a position of power deems it treasonous.

Thank you, Mr. Preston. As a Christian, I understand what you mean and agree. However, it seems to me more likely at present, at least in Britain and Canada, that most people will turn to totalitarianism or Islam before turning to Christ Jesus, so such signs of “childlike natures” are ominous to me. If we won't worship God, then we will make an idol out of an ideology, religion, government or leader. On the other hand, I'm very far from omniscient, so perhaps another historic Christian revival is just around the corner in the Anglosphere. If God ain't in it, then it ain't revival, anyway.

I believe that, even as Christ required childlike innocence towards Him, He also prescribed grown-up cynicism for this corrupt world that we live in, e.g. “... be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” That is the sort of maturity that I want to see expressed in our public lives and politics. Currently, there are far too many who manage the trick of being wise as doves and harmless as serpents.

Contributor Brooks Davis, whom I thank for his kind words, in response to my

“It's really quite a promising sign, I think, that our inherently childlike natures are beginning to show themselves openly.”

comments:

"I think he is jesting, but this would actually be an awful, ominous sign: children need and inwardly crave discipline and direction."

No jest, sir. Like the children you describe, people of all ages need "discipline and direction".
Folly is not to realise that the need is there; the beginning of wisdom is to seek it where it can be found - and then to make a habit of seeking it, for the need is ongoing.

The foolish think they have found all they need in things that simply satisfy the intellect or appetites but human beings are more - much more - than mere intellect and appetites. The most dangerous kind of ignorance is thinking you know what you don't.

Mark Jaremko (by the way is it "Mark" or "Marc"? - it seems to change). I'm not sure I 'd necessarily trust the views on Ukraine, or anywhere else, of someone who attributes statements to other contributors that they never made. I never "asserted" that Crimea had been "liberated". As for your attempts to justify your comments regarding the current condition of Crimea: as before they're completely devoid of hard, sourced information, relying instead on the same unsubstantiated claims and pure supposition as before. Crimea has been separated from Ukraine for two months, so to make any definitive statements about its economic condition is absurd, particularly in the context of a near civil war in the neighbouring state it belonged to until very recently. If it's "too early to tell" the results of the French Revolution, what can we say about events that started shortly before Christmas and are still unfolding?

I never mentioned Tymoshenko in my comment, although I find the western media glorification of this mega-crook disgusting if entirely predictable. Nor am I a "Russian nationalist". I'm opposed to EU and globalist neo-con aggression - wherever it rears its ugly head. The globalists' use of Right Sector thugs just shows how sceptical we should all be about western liberal pontifications about "hate crimes" and "extremism". As with the Islamic extremists they sponsor in Libya, Syria and elsewhere, they're quite happy to work with such folk when it suits them. The Right Sector nationalists are no more than useful idiots, regardless of their macho delusions. They may be able to terrorise unarmed ethnic Russians but they're no match for the globalists who are using them to put down protests in the east. That has been proven beyond a doubt by their failure to respond to the cold-blooded assassination by the new Western stooge regime of one of their leaders.

If anyone out there thinks my assertions of Crimea are incorrect, a brief search of all kinds of news reports or (if you have friends there) a few phone calls will suffice to verify.

In fact, its logically impossible for things to be good: tourism (which made up 60% of Crimean GDP) is down virtually to zero, cost of living has gone up, while pensions (much to the complaint of Russian military veterans) have only been converted to Russian Ruble equivalents from former Hryvnia equivalents. Meanwhile, Moscow has so far not allocated a significant increase in the Crimean budget (much of it subsidized) as compared to what before was coming in from Kiev. Its simple economics -- costs way up, revenue the same, standard of living down.

In terms of your 'Crimeans liberated' assertion' I ask again -- from whom? If you try to answer 'from the fascists in Kiev, you obviously did not read Peter's article on Orwell (whom incidentally, is still banned in Russia, but not 'fascist Ukraine).

You are correct that Kiev most likely shut off utilities to Crimea -- admitting that I am correct in utilities (gas, power, water) are and can be sporadic. But if you Russian nationalists actually read the debate of the Soviet presidium before Crimea was transferred to Ukraine in 1954 (its not because Khruschov was drunk), they did so for those reasons -- Crimea was and is totally bound economically to Ukraine SSR/Ukraine.

Also, the current gov't in Kiev is more less in control by Tymoshenko loyalists ('fascist' Svoboda has 3 cabinet positions, one being agriculture, but overall no real power). There is no regional expert who can seriously consider Tymoshenko a Western stooge, in fact, it is widely known that Putin prefered her over Yanukovich. After her her release from jail recently, the first thing she did was lobby for Westinhouse's (a US firm) recently obtained Ukrainian nuclear fuel contracts be cancelled and reverted back to Russian ones. Hardly the lobbying efforts of a Western 'stooge. She might play the nationalist Ukraine card but her actions have always shown a different story (and that's perhaps why she is also losing the Presidential race).

Who was worse: the Walrus or the Carpenter? The Walrus felt a little sorry for the oysters, but he ate more than the Carpenter. The Carpenter didn't eat as many as the Walrus, but he ate as many as he could get.

MikeBarnes... I agree that UKIP is not explicitly "anti-globalist" and I have no argument with your comment.

The truth of the matter is that UKIP is "young"... though its memberships and supporters are not. As yet, it has not yet become a coherent political party with an explicit set of objectives... which has its advantages and its disadvantages.

Encouragingly, UKIP is not mired in the ancient preoccupations of left, right, up, down, round and round, fascist or communist. It is a genuinely populist movement which welcomes political virgins and philosophical ingenues.

Insofar as UKIP is the only credible political force in British politics which stands four square against one of the most offensive expressions of the developing globalism, namely the EU... I feel entitled to nurse some hope that it will develop into a political party which we can call "anti-globalist".

Mark Jaremko: You continue to make an absurd avalanche of assertions regarding Ukraine, Crimea, and Russia, not one of which you support with factual evidence, and the vast majority of which are self-evidently preposterous. And by the way if utilities in Crimea are "unreliable", it might have something to do with the EU stooge regime in Kiev cutting off the water supply to that region - another completely thuggish action by cabal of western sponsored gangsters that has been completely buried by the corporate media.

I think this topic is interesting in the context of the increasing attempts by the left and the establishment (even on this very blog) to paint UKIP as far-right, racist, and essentially fascist. It is quite clear that the use of language in political discourse has been greatly degraded when a party only as conservative as UKIP cannot exist without being painted as akin to Neo-Nazis.

It is not true that 'most Russians in Crimea view Putin as a liberator' of some sorts. Liberator from what? Before the Crimeam annexation, about 41% supported seperatism. Now with no banks, ever increasing costs of groceries, unreliable utility services, gangsterism, raiderism, ethnic strife, jailings for 'thought crimes, and on and on...most Crimeans are coming in for a hard landing of what 'joining Rissia' actially entails. Recent poll numbers from the region show support for amnexation around 15%.

Peter,

Putin might not commit attrocities on the same scale of Stalin, he has also never made any efforts to conceal his admiration for Koba the Dread.

It is not true that 'most Russians in Crimea view Putin as a liberator' of some sorts. Liberator from what? Before the Crimeam annexation, about 41% supported seperatism. Now with no banks, ever increasing costs of groceries, unreliable utility services, gangsterism, raiderism, ethnic strife, jailings for 'thought crimes, and on and on...most Crimeans are coming in for a hard landing of what 'joining Rissia' actially entails. Recent poll numbers from the region show support for amnexation around 15%.

Peter,

Putin might not commit attrocities on the same scale of Stalin, he has also never made any efforts to conceal his admiration for Koba the Dread.

Jack: And of course the CIA and other western intelligence agencies have never had the slightest truck with organised crime in any shape or form. The very thought would be utterly repugnant to such upstanding folk.

@ Frank Finch
Where is it in the UKIP constantly changing manifesto, that they are anti globalist . They are all for free trade .Which is the staple ingredient of the Globalists, Even though they might not believe it ( the globalists that is ) themselves, always it seems one step ahead of most political parties. .
UKIP might be anti a federal Europe, until that is they might have another change of heart . but it seems they are perfectly happy to play the globalist tune. Even if the two are connected. But then maybe they are just to dim to notice . After all Farage was in a previous life, a city trader.

@ Henry Noel
The question is can you tell the difference .Both started life as medicinal drink laced with cocaine. I can On the other front, One hat a tash the other did not. One killed his own folk willy nilly ,the other his perceived enemies.
Which is worse, a subjective question Henry, coke or pepsi. ?

" ‘The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’.

I suggest that whenever people add the " - ist" suffix to any word, it is often a sign that the original word has got too complicated for them to go on thinking usefully about it. A modern - and currently very popular - example must surely be 'racist' or 'racialist', an epithet which seems to me more than any other to demonstrate how gossipy the news media have become and with their "Hush, now! We mustn't say it out loud" 'a-word', b-word' or 'xyz - word' abbreviations remind me of nothing so much as young schoolchildren who suspect with their still undamaged innocence that there's is something very naughty about the word 'knickers' but have heard that some school-colleague has actually been heard to pronounce it out loud.

It's really quite a promising sign, I think, that our inherently childlike natures are beginning to show themselves openly.
It cannot now surely be long, I imagine, before products may go on sale whose packaging carries a warning that:
"This product was packaged in a factory which also packages nuts and which has been obliged to dismiss an employee for using the "x - word""

What sort of society do we inhabit, when unborn infants are put to death without trial - and within the law, if you please! - but, if we say a naughty word, our motivation will be taken for granted and the news media, having reported that what we said was 'naughty', ensures by doing everything short of finishing the naughty word out loud that as many people as can be reached may be likewise offended?

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